Solar power will never be adequate to displace fossil fuels because of the basic physics involved. At noon on a sunny day in mid-summer the sun delivers 1300 watts per square metre and the best available solar panels only deliver 18% of that. That may be fine for residential use, but not industrial.
I could see a solar-chemical process, possibly, which would produce fuels. That could get better than that 18%.
If....and I say a BIG if.....a solar panel can be gotten to be say 40% efficient or greater—than MAYBE in 10 years you could be right. But that is NOT very likely. As stated 18% efficient is considered GOOD right now.
Drill..
Drill!!
DRILL !!
Redox Power Systems is a Maryland startup which claims to have a new fuel cell technology that is one tenth the cost and one tenth the size of current fuel cells and runs at 80% efficiency when used for both heat and power. Their first product is a 25kw unit the size of a dish washer.
Fuel cells run on fossil fuels, e.g., natural gas. If Redox's systems work as advertised, the power companies will be in trouble, regardless of the performance of solar and wind.
How much wattage/sqft does a person, on average, use?
If the got solar power to a 50% efficiency, how would that change things?
I think that all the alternatives will not completely replace oil, but it will go a long way to reducing it.
Another thing that keeps solar power, or wind power, from being more widely adopted is that there is no efficient way to alternate between alternatives and hydrocarbons seamlessly If it were possible for residential or industry to easily make use of renewables when it’s being generated and automatically switch back to hydrocarbons when it’s not, or be able to store the energy created and make use of it during other times, adoption rates of solar panels would probably sky-rocket.
Gasoline contains 33.4 kW-h per gallon. If one does the math vs. solar it becomes quite clear that it is not feasible, especially considering it takes me 3 minutes to fill my 18 gallon tank.